Rapper dies after last week's shooting from CNN Report

LAS VEGAS (CNN) -- Tupac Shakur, the rapper whose
raw lyrics seemed a blueprint of his own violent
life, died Friday from wounds suffered in a
drive-by shooting. He was 25.

Shakur, his mother at his bedside, was pronounced
dead at 7:03 p.m. EDT at the University Medical
Center in Las Vegas, according to hospital
spokeswoman Nancy Collins.

Collins said doctors determined Shakur died from
respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest.
The rapper had been in a medical-induced coma
after having his right lung removed earlier this
week.

Shakur was hit by four bullets September 7 as he
rode near the Las Vegas Strip in a car driven by
the head of Death Row Records, Marion "Suge"
Knight, who was slightly wounded. It was the
second time in less than two years that the rapper
was gunned down.

The Las Vegas attackers got away, and no arrests
have been made.

Controversial career

Known simply as 2Pac, with "Thug Life" tattooed
across his stomach, Shakur embodied the extremes
of pop culture. Fans loved him, buying millions of
his records, while politicians and others
denounced both him and his lyrics for glorifying
violence and drugs and degrading women.

He was born Tupac Amaru Shakur in 1971 in New York
City. His mother, Afeni Shakur, is a former Black
Panther activist and the inspiration for the
touching song "Dear Mama" on his Grammy-nominated
album "Me Against The World."

As a member of the Grammy-nominated group Digital
Underground, he appeared in 1991 on the track
"Same Song" from "This is an EP Release" and on
the album "Sons Of The P."

That same year, Shakur achieved
individual recognition with the album
"2Pacalypse Now," which spawned the successful
singles "Trapped" and "Brenda's Got A Baby."

The album, with references to police officers
being killed, drew notoriety when a slain police
officer's family claimed Shakur's music drove the
killer to action. By that time, Shakur had made
his first film appearance in Earnest Dickerson's
"Juice."

In the 1992 John Singleton film, "Poetic Justice," Shakur co- starred
opposite pop singer Janet Jackson. But Shakur
seemed to spend as much time in courtrooms and
jail cells than he did on movie sets.

A 1993 confrontation with two off-duty Atlanta
police officers led to charges that were later
dropped.

In 1994, he was sentenced to 15 days in jail for
assault and battery on a music video producer.

Then, in November 1994, he was shot
five times and robbed of $40,000
worth of jewelry in the lobby of a New York
recording studio.

In 1995, Shakur was found guilty of sexually
assaulting a female fan in a New York hotel room.
He served eight months before winning release
pending his appeal. In 1996, a judge ordered him
to serve 120 days in jail for probation
violations. An appeal was pending, and he had
recently completed filming a role as a detective
for the Orion picture "Gang Related."

'Soldiers are out there'

When the rapper appeared at the MTV Video Awards
three days before the Las Vegas shooting, he
explained why he stayed in touch with members of
his "posse" by two-way radio.

"Well today, every young black man needs
to be physically inclined and military-minded," he said. "And this (two-way radio) is part of the military mind. The soldiers are out there.

"I'm not the same guy that would come to the
awards, have a problem with somebody and whup
their ass in front of everybody," Shakur
continued. "So now I got the radio. I see a
problem, we quelch it. It's out. No big fires,
just small, tiny little sparks that can be put
out."

"That shows my growth," he said. "That shows our
brain power. That shows the organization and not
just Tupac, but Death Row as a whole."

Still there was trouble.

Police were called into the awards show to break
up a confrontation between Shakur's entourage and
six other men.

The night he was hit by four bullets, Shakur and
his entourage had been involved in a fight outside
their Las Vegas hotel.

Yet Shakur was not just the fury, expletives and
anger of songs like "F--- the World." He could be
poignant ("It was hell hugging on my mama from a
jail cell") and both sympathetic and critical of
young black men trying to become "gangstas."

When Shakur talked to Details magazine earlier
this year, he said: "All good niggers, all the
niggers who change the world, die in violence.
They don't die in regular ways."

Another Rapper Murdered!

"As you sow, so shall you reap."

Not six months after Tupac's death, another singer Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G., who parlayed a rough life as a crack dealer into a platinum-selling career as a "gangsta rapper" was murdered. Mr. B.I.G. was gunned down in a drive-by shooting only minutes after leaving the 11th Annual Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles on March 1, 1997. Does anyone need more dramatic evidence of the small and shrinking gap between violent rhetoric and violent action in the volatile world of gangsta rap?